


I Remember

by screamingshark



Series: Rite of Moonlight [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Death, Gen, Implications of Slavery, Rite of Moonlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:37:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6652669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingshark/pseuds/screamingshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He faintly remembers his mother.</p>
<p>A gentle smile and sweet voice naming him before she was taken from him and there is nothing more than black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember

**Author's Note:**

> This first in a series where Tsukishima is a moon prince! There's art and more for this series on my tumblr @screamingshark under the tag Rite of Moonlight~

He faintly remembers his mother.

A gentle smile and sweet voice naming him before she was taken from him and there is nothing more than black.

 

Kei. Like a firefly, small and easy to say but meant to glow with implications. Implications he’d soon come to despise. 

 

He’d heard stories of his birth, each fanciful and laden with pretty words all trying to mask what it truly was. Pretty lies, he’d heard his brother say bitterly. Barely knowing how to walk and already the seeds of guilt were sown deep within him. He’d killed his mother. That was the only truth he knew.

 

Despite this, his brother was kind. Akiteru, he remembers, was a strong boy who’d sheltered, fed and nutured his little brother without hesitation. Kei remembers everything about him and laments how little their time together had been. The moments filled with laughter when Akiteru would burst through the doors, grinning with wild excitement over having hunted enough for them to feast like kings. The gentle moments spend teaching Kei how to read and write in their native language, reading the legends from long past. 

 

The tense moments when Akiteru wasn’t strong and hid behind the house with the stable horses to weep and beg the moon for a reason. Any at all to explain why his little brother had been chosen for such a cursed life. Kei only remembers hearing his pleas once. The seed grew.

 

He’d spent seven years with his brother.

 

The moon was full on the night of his seventh birthday. Akiteru had managed to pull together enough money to trek into the village and buy a single strawberry pastry. He took every measure to make sure it was perfect. Still warm, a decent size and filled to the brim with ripe red berries and smooth luscious cream. Kei remembers the delighted look on his face when he returned, box in hand and eager to see his brothers reaction. 

 

The look on Akiteru’s face made the pastry that much sweeter. 

 

It was the dead of night when the horses became restless, spooked by sounds in the distance and forcing Akiteru to run to calm them down. Kei follows, gangly disproportionate limbs awkwardly carrying buckets of oats and hay to where his brother stands petting the two old mares until their fright subsides. 

 

The two brothers had shared sleepy giggles as they walked back from the stables. Akiteru winding an arm around Kei’s shoulders to keep him warm.

 

He wasn’t expecting his brother to stop midway, a shiver running through him when Akiteru’s skin and blood ran colder than the wind around them. He remembers confusion and the large imposing bodies of several palace guards.

 

Kei was seven years old when the guards asked to speak to his brother and he was terrified. 

 

Terrified of the way his brother shook and yelled for them to leave, only to be held back when one of the knights gently ushered Kei into the house.

 

At first he thought his brother was in trouble. Had he done something against the rules? Had they come to take him away!? Then he heard them, a gentle whisper at first then a loud boom of shattered angry sobs pleading and begging not to separate them.

 

Kei was seven years old and he didn’t understand. Why would they be separated? Why did these men appear tonight? They were good people who raised a small farm and helped around the village when they could. They were good people.

 

So why?

 

A shiver still runs down his spine when he remembers Akiteru rushing past the guards to embrace him, shivering and wetting his neck and shoulder in tears that only frightened Kei more. Hands, cold and lined in metal and leather pried them apart, hauling Kei up into the arms of strangers covered in black and orange. 

 

It took too long, too much yelling and a guard punching Akiteru to the floor, for Kei to scream in realization.

 

They weren’t taking Akiteru away for being bad. They didn’t want Akiteru at all.

 

He was placed on the floor and bowed to, deep voices begging the moon for forgiveness and explaining that he was being taken to the palace for his own safety.

 

They called him the moon prince. A phrase he’d only heard once before, lined with bitterness that clenched around his heart. The seed sprouted.

 

Kei remembers watching them toss a sack of coins at his brothers feet. The boy, barely an adult, clutching his cheek and frozen stiff at the sight of them ushering his only family into a chariot. 

 

Kei screamed and cried and yanked at the hands of these men, calling out for Akiteru to help him, to free him. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks, a small handful hardening into pearls that hit the ground with deafening thuds.

 

His brother was not moving. He was not coming to save and protect him. He was staring. Staring with tears that matched his own and shaking almost violently until Kei was placed in the chariot and out of sight. 

 

The rest is hazy. A loud yell of his name ripped raw and desperate from Akiteru’s throat and a floor lined with pearls as they carried him off to the center of Karasuno under a bright red moon.

 

Kei hasn’t seen his brother since.

 

Eleven years have passed and Kei clings to these memories with a vice, fueling the seed in his heart that has blossomed bitter anger from guilt. 

 

His days are spent locked in a tower, dressed in silks and rich cottons, lined with gold and pale jewels in orange, black and purple. The colors of royalty so said the King. He clicks his tongue in irritation.

 

The current King of Karasuno is an old, kind hearted man. Well beloved of his people and the herald that united the lands of Nekoma, Nohebi, Fukurodani and Aoba Johsai to Karasuno for the benefit and well being of all the lands people. Kei acknowledges the man for bringing peace and prosperity after years of endless war, but he knows far better than to simply label him as kind.

 

Meeting the man had not been kind at all.

 

The moon had fallen when the chariot slowly stopped in front of the castle and Kei was ushered along to meet the King. He was exhausted, eyes puffy and red from weeping and his voice shot from wailing, now only desperate for some sleep.

 

The guards were much gentler this time around, slowly helping him climb the steps as he wobbled and whimpered. Fear shot through his spine when he finally arrived at the throne room, large heavy doors groaning as they opened for him. 

 

Huge tapestries woven with history and monikers of crows lined the walls with sheer silks falling and pooling down from the ceiling, all soft and billowy but no less frightening to Kei who could barely stop the quakes and shivers upon seeing the imposing figure down the center of the large room.

 

A hand at his back had gently pushed him forward until he was face to face with the Crow King himself. And then he was alone. Silent and without the gentle hands that guided him, in front of the man who removed him from his home. 

 

The old king stared down at the young boy, the gentle smile he’d heard stories of was nowhere in sight and all he could do in that time was stare back. 

 

Stare back and remember how frightened the guards had been when he screamed. A painful memory but one that ceased the shaking and had given seven year old Kei the strength to scowl at the most powerful man in the land.

 

The king stepped forward and Kei refused the urge to step back, standing tall against him and glaring still when the man crouched to his height.

 

“You are very lucky to be alive.” The king croaked. A shudder of unease ran down Kei’s spine, eyes widening when the older man’s face stretched into a smile. There, alone with that man, he felt his very soul tremble.

 

The king then placed his hand on Kei’s head, his palm was warm and glowing faintly under the newborn sunlight of daybreak. 

 

Kei learned two things that day.

 

The first was that he was the tenth blessing the moon has given. Nine times before him had the moon given up it’s essence to bestow fortune on the land. 

 

The king then explained how vital he was. A blessing from the moon had to be protected and nurtured and taught to ensure their gifts were not wasted. 

 

For a moment Kei felt in awe of his title, never once could he have imagined that he was so special. His brother had wept for him, begged the moon for signs to help his cursed brother yet this man was telling him he was blessed. He didn’t understand.

 

Until he learned the second.

 

Kei faltered, the dim glow of the kings palm strengthened then and a thin trail of gold smoke found it’s way around the boys wrists, thick gold bangles manifested and locked around them and Kei felt the magic surge deep in his veins.

 

Since the first blessing of the moon, hundreds of years ago, not one blessing has survived past childhood. The first lived to be twenty. 

 

Kei was the first to pass age five since then.

 

He could not forget the look that crossed their king that morning. Eyes glazed with greed when he finished his spell and the gold bangles rested heavy on his small wrists.

 

“For your protection.” was what the king declared. ‘You are mine’ was left unspoken yet boomed loudly in Kei’s ears.

 

The blossom of bitter anger budded.

 

Eleven years have only made the blossom grow, days locked away with nothing but his thoughts and paraded as the Jewel of Karasuno only served to make him angrier.

 

He despises his title and the king for his misgivings behind closed doors. Moreso he despises the now lighter golden bangles that prevent him from leaving the castle. 

 

Years have been leading up to this moment, he thinks bitterly as he watches the moon rise from his window in the high tower. Soon he’d be eighteen and that damned spell would be broken.

 

He counts the moons till then for now.


End file.
